Editor’s Note: The USTA website is pleased to present freelance writer Bob Carson and his popular “Outside the Box” features. This monthly series is a menu of outlandish proposals presented with a wink — but the purpose behind them is serious. The views contained in this column are that of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of the United States Trotting Association.

Last year, a friend recommended an unusual book. The title is, One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America, by Gene Weingarten. My reading of this book led to an unusual project. This project may involve you.

Weingarten is an extraordinary reporter. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes. He freely admits the idea for this particular book began as a stunt. A date in American history was picked completely at random. Children reached into a bag to select pieces of paper for the year, month, and date for the project. The hands of fate landed on Sunday, Dec. 28, 1986. Weingarten took the date and went to work mining details from people and events from that single day 33 years ago.

This book tests a thesis that Weingarten believes — writers should be able to find a compelling story anywhere. In his work as an editor, he asked reporters to walk no farther than seven blocks and bring back a good story. Another time, dartboard-like, he selected names from a phone book, then had his writers profile whoever’s name the dart found.

Weingarten put himself to a similar task for this book. The result was a series of stories about random people and how fate touched them.

Four truths are at the heart of this stunt.

• If you have enough patience and dig deep enough, there is a story behind every person (and every horse).

• Embracing randomness and karma is a good idea.

• Carefully documenting the story of any person (or any horse) can make the mundane interesting.

• Our lives often become so programmed that it is difficult to pause, to isolate moments, and to experience the wonders all around us.

Gene Weingarten selected a date in the past and worked backward to excavate stories of people and events. My stunt is to randomly select a Standardbred yearling that recently sold at auction and follow the horse, and the ownership, in the future. As of this moment, they do not realize they are selected.

My selection process was simple, a trio of catalogs from major yearling sales composed my random pool of possibilities; Lexington, Ohio Select, Harrisburg. The names of each sale were printed on different file cards and placed in a brown paper lunch bag. A little girl named Abbey ruffled her hand around inside of the sack and settled her chubby fingers on one card. She handed me the card. I took the matching catalog from a stack and asked her to close her eyes. With her eyes closed, I asked her to open the book. Tentatively, she did this. I folded the corner of the page selected. I now had a yearling.

The game was afoot. The first thing I did was investigate the yearling and click to see the sales results and to learn who purchased the yearling and at what cost. I poured over the page to decide how much pedigree power the yearling had and pulled up the sales video. I was already excited.

I opened a file to hold information. Over the long winter, I will track down where the now 2-year-old is training and who is doing the training. At some point, I will make a phone call to the connections and arrange a visit. I will look for story threads to pull. It’s interesting, I did not purchase this yearling, never placed my hand on a flank, yet already this feels like my horse.

While doing a silly experiment like this, I took the silliness up a notch. I made a gambling deal with myself. Should the horse qualify and race for purse money, I will wager $10 on the horse in every race. Maybe not a wager to win, maybe just a wager to place or show, or as part of an exacta box, or part of a trifecta, but this horse racing will mean a $10 wager.
And now, the long wait, filled with watching and hoping. The work begins. Eventually, research and interviews will take place. Roads will be followed.

You may think, hey pal, don’t get your hopes up, the horse may never make it into a race. No worries, the story does not need to be happy. The horse does not need to be successful. The connections do not need to be famous people. Winning and losing are two sides of the same coin. Gay Talese, a famous writer who took a spin in the sporting world, once remarked that he found it much more interesting to write about and to read about losers than winners.

Fate will determine much, but a story will be there; there is always a story. I hope to write it in a style that horse folks, as well as people who do not know a trotter from a toothpick, will find the story accessible. One day, on this site, the identity of this mystery horse will be revealed, and the story will be told.